Traditional Lifestyle, Food and Medicine of the Primitive Tribe Raji: A Historical Study

Raji tribe is a socially and economically underdeveloped tribe of Uttarakhand Himalaya. They are also called by local names like Vanraut, Vanrawat etc. Raji is the most primitive tribe of Uttarakhand and has AustroAsiatic non-Aryan connections1 . Whereas anthropologically they belong to the Tibeto-Burman family. The people of Raji tribe were earlier hunters and gatherers and their habitat was limited to the middle of dense forests. Today they live in the forest areas of Uttarakhand on the India-Nepal border. They are a little-known tribal community who are descendants of the prehistoric Kiratas. They were relatively ancient inhabitants of Uttarakhand compared to the Khash, Naga, Aryans and Tibetans. But due to invasions by different ethnic groups, the Kirats gradually disappeared from Uttarakhand and their descendants known as the Raji tribe remained in Kumaon and Nepal. In the last decades, on one hand, the population of Uttarakhand has been continuously increasing and the population of other tribes has remained stable, while on the other hand, the Raji tribe, the most primitive tribe of the state, has been moving towards extinction. Raji tribe has been included among the 18 most endangered human groups in the country2 . In August 2013, a committee headed by Govinda Chandra Naskar first expressed its apprehensions about the decline in the population of vulnerable tribal groups like Raji3 . Till a few decades ago, this tribe used to lead a nomadic life and used to live in caves (Prayag Joshi, 2022) and even at present their habitat is limited to the dense forests of India-Nepal border of Uttarakhand. Now some changes have started taking place in their life and behavior. This tribe has its own traditional way of life which they have been practicing for hundreds of years. In this research paper traditional lifestyle, food habits and medical practices of the Raji tribe has been studies.